This is slaughter. The inability of Egyptian forces to evade ambush, even when in offensive operation against ISIS, presaged today’s mosque slaughter. The level of combatant casualties presages collapse of the command structure. It may have already occurred.

Perhaps political obstacles obstruct effective support of an important linchpin of moderation in the Middle East. The perception of the Egyptian army as an acceptably professional force may also disguise the obvious problem. Remedies to consider:

The immediate option is to provide Egypt with an intensive air surveillance intelligence product for the Sinai area.

An extended option is development of air mobility, or at least adaptation of the older U.S. AirLand Battle doctrine to Egyptian conditions.

Possible weaknesses in basic infantry tactics, as they are now applied in Egypt, rendering units vulnerable to the ambush, should be explored. One small unit rule from Vietnam was, “If at all possible, don’t walk down the road.”

So what is the likely decision process of the military in targeting a map rectangle near al Rawdah? It is almost predictable that an unsophisticated military, confronted by a severe threat such as ISIS, resorts to targeting by coincidental association. Rules of thumb as to what is typically found in a rectangle are applied. If the bombs aren’t hitting sand, which may occur out of political necessity for “show”, high collateral casualties and limited damage to the enemy result.

We continue from Saudi Arabia Versus Iran; the Saudi Decision Process; Part 1 and Part 2, which established as an “almost-fact” that Prince Salman is the sole author of policy both foreign and domestic. The Iranian decision process is quite different. But let’s put that off to consider the two countries as competing regional powers. What are their relative strengths and weaknesses?

Which nation can prevail on the battlefield, now, and at at various times in the next ten years? Let’s look at just the first element of the list.

Orders of battle, paper or real, can mislead. The history of the U.S. military is one of competent leadership, seldom dipping below the mediocre. U.S. analysis of past battles includes the study of weapons performance, resulting in emphasis on superior quality. Other wealthy nations that attempt to copy the U.S. military have been so inspired.

But the psychology of U.S. forces and some other Western forces has been difficult to copy. There is nothing obvious about U.S. society that produces superior soldiers, yet it does. A social comparison that helps to estimate the quality of a foreign army does not exist. So let’s cut the Gordian knot with a novel assumption: the signal indicator of military potential (not a combat strength factor, as would be computed in comparing orders of battle) is the manpower of units that most approach simple infantry units, with transport by trucks or, at best, by armored personnel carriers.

These units sleep in the mud. They get blisters, trench rot, and they get to see their buddies die close up. They throw grenades, take on tanks with small arms, dig foxholes, carry the wounded, and step over the dead and dying. Why would someone want this job? The motivations are doubtless a mix:

Patriotism.

Ideological or religious motivation, including martyrdom.

Mythic structure within living memory.

Enhanced personal identity.

Sense of achievement.

Absence of other opportunities.

A personal force multiplier — a weapon.

The force multiplier of the foot soldier is a small thing. The other list factors hold sway. But in other military specializations with greater personal force multipliers, they are not as necessary,. A jet pilot can die suddenly, and alone, but the rest of the experience can’t be compared to life in the trenches.

According to CSIS, in 2007, the regular Iranian Army had about 700,000 men, of which there were seven infantry divisions.The size of a division varies. A large logistics “tail” is typical of Western divisions. Minimizing this, the total infantry component of Iran may be around 120,000. Our Gordian-knot clipper does not require precision. The IRGC has about 100,000 lightly armed members, plus 15000 in the Quds Force, Iran’s “special forces”, which are logistically even lighter. This provides an estimate of about 220,000 “grunts”.

Saudi Arabia doesn’t have any infantry divisions, with a possible exception of a “Guards” unit. Since even the U.S. Army has a sizeable infantry, there must be a reason other than utility for the absence of an infantry. In Saudi Arabia, the attractions of the list don’t work for infantry. No Saudi in his right mind wants to hump a pack and a rifle.

During the 1991 Gulf War, the Saudis were criticized by the U.S. military because their barracks were air conditioned. The U.S. argument was that the air conditioning deprived Saudi troops of essential conditioning to the environment. Readers in the U.S., which has many hot locales, know this well. They also know that when the power goes out, life in many parts gets very hard very fast. Living in barracks in the middle of the Arabian desert without air conditioning is a form of torture. Such is war.

Nevertheless, the making of an effective army is not as much about physical toughening as motivation. In one study, the Israeli army found no correlation between physical conditioning above a norm, and performance in battle.

Suppose we’ve managed to get the troops into the field. Why do they fight? It only starts with “God, King, and Country”. It really gets going when your buddy gets killed. The grunt fights for his friends. This is why troops who have been “blooded” fight better than greens. Part of it is from experience, and part of it is vengeance. Of the troops who landed on D-Day in World War II, 90% were dead by the end of the war. You might think it kinder to rotate the survivors out of the theater, but it was not done, because blooded troops fought best.

This is why, out of conscience and regard for the lives of our troops, we endeavor to give them the best weapons possible. Other nations do this too, but lack the structure of personal motivation that makes a good soldier.

Our Gordian knot-clipper points to the existence of a sizeable Iranian infantry component as a sign of potency absent in Saudi Arabia. The Iran-Iraq war of 1980-1988 provides the mythic structure. Iranian youth were motivated to acts of suicidal bravery by religious martyrdom. In the West, we tend to deprecate this motivational strategy, having found that the soldier who intelligently risks his life is a better soldier than one bent on self destruction. But the martyrdom of the list is still present in a way that facilitates Iran’s deployment of poorly equipped yet highly effective militia.

What will become of Zimbabwe is a challenge to open source. We look for fault lines. One is obvious, the purge of military veterans in favor of Grace Mugabe and the ZANU-PF youth wing. If this is the only fault line, it is possible that even a military junta offshoot could run the country better than Mugabe’s circle. It would merely have to deal with:

...the Zimbabwean economy is recovering and that new business is growing in the rural areas.[48] ...(or 20% of Zimbabwe's area), 49.9% of those who received land were rural peasants, 18.3% were "unemployed or in low-paid jobs in regional towns, growth points and mines," 16.5% were civil servants, and 6.7% were of the Zimbabwean working class. Despite the claims by critics of the land reform only benefiting government bureaucrats, only 4.8% of the land went to business people, and 3.7% went to security services.

But perhaps the above is a neat paper fiction. Perhaps the distributions were along family lines, recreating virtual tribal villages, with civil servants and security forces as virtual headmen. With competing interpretations, the statistics reveal nothing about fault lines. (Reuters) Zimbabwe’s army seizes power, targets ‘criminals’ around Mugabe offers an interesting tidbit relating to VP Mnangagwa, whose firing was one of the triggers of the coup:

According to a trove of intelligence documents reviewed by Reuters this year, Mnangagwa has been planning to revitalize the economy by bringing back white farmers kicked off their land and patching up relations with the World Bank and IMF.

But all intelligence “troves” are subject to suspicion. Without the provenance, understanding the sources and their motives, it is impossible to rule out fiction, or contamination of fact with fiction, either by one of Mnangagwa’s many enemies, or someone turning a buck on the side with creative writing. If Mnangagwa really intended to bring back white farmers, the reasons might be:

Turning to an outside group skirts the problem of favoritism.

The outside group can be enfranchised and disenfranchised at will.

Industrial farming is not a native skill. ZANU-PF neglected to transfer it when the whites were kicked out.

Robert Mugabe has ruled Rhodesia since 1980. An occasionally independent judiciary, and skeletal opposition remain. The tolerance of of a skeletal opposition is usually to make it easier to watch. The phenomena of the judiciary is not as easily explained, but it may be an unconventional mechanism for building concensus.

Excepting Rwanda, the Niger Delta, and the borderland between North and Equatorial Africa, most of Africa’s current conflicts are not basically tribal or cultural. They are fueled by resources, in areas hospitable to private armies lead by charismatic madmen. If tribal frictions remain in Zimbabwe, they are dormant, at least until a conflict over legitimacy emerges.

But how does a new ruler or clique attain legitimacy? Until yesterday, it all stemmed from Mugabe himself, who attained it by ending white rule. There is no other symbol, purpose, or status that can grant the junta the equivalent. So Mugabe has been installed in a glass case, where respiration continues while the men with guns try to figure this out.

The history of other African states suggests a hypothesis for events following the passing of Mugabe:

Conflict requires energy. In the classic Anatomy of Revolution, Crane R. Brinton remarks that revolution is rare in countries of grinding poverty. The book was published in 1938, before our awareness of the form of energy that derives from ideological or religious fanaticism. But since neither exists in Zimbabwe, it’s a good rule for the circumstance.

So we have a projection for a conflict of limited duration, followed, perhaps, by the stasis of a dictatorship as in nearby Uganda. The probabilities for the projection cannot be assigned. There is too much uncertainty in the data at this juncture.

The video begins with statements at a Portugal web summit by two living mental giants, Stephen Hawking, and Max Tegmark. It continues with the interview of a female simalucrum, which in the meaning of Philip K. Dick is the impeccable impersonation of a human by a robot.

The video ends with a question put to the simalucrum by an interviewer:

This blog contains so many Asia articles, it would be superfluous to write on the occasion of Trump’s Asia trip. Nothing new has transpired.

It’s a lot of reading. Even in capsule form, there may be enough words to hide the obvious conclusion, of which there are many examples. Imagine for a moment the U.S. as an imperial power. It is widely accepted among historians that no imperial power has managed to shed the military obligations of empire before economic collapse. The classical description:

In formation, economic advantage flows from the periphery to the core of the imperial empire.

A military, required to defend the periphery, is funded by the economic advantage.

For various reasons, which tend to differ in each case, the economic benefit to the core declines, while the cost of defense increases.

To share this fate is ironic, considering that the U.S. has historically been opposed to imperialism as an economic ideology. In some cases, involving the Seven Sisters, and multinationals in Latin America, the U.S. did behave as a loosely jointed imperial power, but always with the attitude of denial. We never thought ourselves as such.

Perhaps it would be better if we had. We would be better equipped to see the pattern. Uniquely, after World War II, and until the opening of China, the U.S. enjoyed the primary advantage of an imperial power, low cost supplies of raw materials. The defense of our politically nonexistent empire had another label, Containment of the Soviet Union.

The accusation of “U.S. Imperialism” was the traditional hue and cry against — “us.” It is not recapitulated here to be accusatory. I’m on our side. But it is crucial to understand our predicament. Can we, just once, avoid the “inevitability of history” ?

There are so many think tanks, and so many thinkers, and so many politicians, yet in aggregate, they seem (and I say this without impugning anybody’s individual intelligence) — dumb. There is no military substitute for soft power.In argument, I wrote:

So what do you think? Are you going to let history deal us a crash landing, or will you craft a soft landing?

To my Chinese readers, I intend no harm. But since China has with finality chosen a form of government with Confucian roots, instead of democracy, the growing together that was anticipated 20 years ago cannot occur. We, too, have traditions to protect.

In the distant past, man was shaped by environment. Now the predominant effect is the other way around. In approach to how we can resume the molding of man by environment in a positive way, I’ve written something. Perhaps you could have a look at it.

A third point of triangulation is the detention of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The visible reason is Hadi’s alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood. His motive is simple; in a situation where Hadi has to lick the pot and scrape the pan for his own power pyramid, the Brotherhood is irresistibly attractive. It is the Islamic analog to Masonry. The Brotherhood is suppressed in the Gulf with the same rationale of fear as formerly in the West of the Masons. But the Brotherhood is a very real threat. It’s like an instant cake batter of octopus tentacles.

Let’s skip the question of whether it is actually wise to transport the official government of the country you are defending out of that country, into your own, and house them in a Hotel California (You can check out any time you like,But you can never leave!) Hadi is not an oligarch, but same description of sanction applies:

The designated individual was removed, suddenly, completely, and probably irreversibly, from public life within the Saudi sphere of influence, even at the cost of creating an immediately unstable situation.

Should we trust Al Jazeera’s explanation, which involves the UAE, with which Qatar is in serious dispute? Quoting,

Hadi's weakening has gone hand-in-hand with the UAE's growing power in southern Yemen.
The Gulf nation has trained, financed and armed militias in Yemen that only answer to it, set up prisons, and created a security establishment parallel to Hadi's government.

Perhaps, with Hadi absent, it is a bit easier for the UAE to liquidate the Brotherhood in southern Yemen. But the explanation itself is not important to the question, which is about style and identity. The sudden destruction of political legitimacy, perhaps without adequate consideration of the consequences, is common to all three events of the first bullet list.

The bullet list of Part 1 encompasses two elements of foreign policy, and one of total domestic reorganization. So the logic includes:

Common style, which seems to lack options of soft manipulation, and subtle, as opposed to overt, coercion.

Purview both foreign and domestic.

Power of decision almost without limit in both domains.

In the language of AI, the above is like a backward-chaining logic proof. You pick something that you think might be true, the hypothesis, and establish a chain of logic that leads to the presupposed conclusion. The hypothesis is that Prince Salman is the sole author. While logic admits the existence of pure facts, our field does not. But the conclusion is the almost-fact that policy authorship, as well as executive power, is concentrated in the hands of Prince Salman.

You probably guessed close to this, but may wonder if there are other authors as well. The logic suggests there are none who rise above counsel and institutional expertise.

Through careful open source analysis, we now have an almost-fact about the power structure of Saudi Arabia. Most of us can’t help rooting for Prince Salman, hoping he has the virtue, intelligence, and wisdom equal to the titanic task of building a modern nation. Some of his potential opponents have been comfortably imprisoned in the Tower, oops, the Riyadh Ritz Carlton. They have friends on the outside, and in Scotland — sorry, Yemen. The danger they present is amplified by the (Al Jazeera) Houthi offer of political asylum.

If it seems ludicrous that a Saudi prince would switch sides, consider the case of former Yemen president Ali Abdullah Saleh. A Western leaning kleptocrat, the Saudis forced his removal in favor of the more upright Mansour Hadi. Saleh then allied with the Houthis, who he formerly persecuted. There resulted, for a while, a working coalition between the predominantly Shiite Houthis and Saleh’s Sunni tribes.

The Houthi side is the Iran side. Nevertheless, there is just enough Sunni presence in the mix to make switching sides possible. To whom might this be attractive?

The man who had everything, and now has nothing.

The man who has something, but resents what he has lost.

The political or religious malcontent.

The choice can be rationalized as one of temporary expediency. Allies today, enemies tomorrow, such was the tribal ethos before the glaciation of geopolitics. This was true for Europe of the 19th century, and a good part of the 20th.

So what is Prince Salman going to do with the occupants of the Ritz Carlton? His decision style lacks options of soft manipulation, and subtle, as opposed to overt, coercion.

This is also an interesting exercise in the use of information from Al Jazeera, which though frequently richer than Western source, has the problem of a subtle agenda that may or may not be present, and may or may not interfere with profitable use.

In the most subtle way possible, more subtle than even the twists of RT, Al Jazeera is the mouthpiece of Qatar’s ongoing struggle with the other Gulf states. Information from Al Jazeera is useful to us to the extent that it is not compromised by the agenda of Qatar. So we sift for the bare facts and examine with curiosity the more complex statements of cause and effect. An interesting read is to be found in (Al Jazeera) Is Lebanon caught in a Saudi-Iran regional power play? Quoting,

The government in Riyadh wanted to “kill two birds with one stone”, Halawi told Al Jazeera – consolidating power locally, “which required moving Hariri to Riyadh and allegedly – according to some Lebanese local reports – taking over his assets … [while] simultaneously attempting to shake Hezbollah’s comfortable seat in Hariri’s ‘unity government’.”

It could be true, or not. Al Jazeera gives no credence to a beneficent intent of the Salmans’ purge. If it did, then the rephrased statement could instead read [my edits],

The government in Riyadh wanted to “kill two birds with one stone”, XXX told Al Jazeera – removing Hariri, a proxy inextricably entwined with the elites purged for corruption, [while] simultaneously attempting to shake Hezbollah’s comfortable seat in Hariri’s ‘unity government’.”

In this analysis, the above statement(s) are used only to the extent that it doesn’t matter which is which. The goal is merely to identify similarities of style in the execution of Saudi policies, foreign and domestic. The style is this:

The designated individual was removed, suddenly, completely, and probably irreversibly from public life within the Saudi sphere of influence, even at the cost of creating an immediately unstable situation.

About the purged elite, the same statement can be made, with high, if not certain probability. The removal of the elite is probably irreversible. As with Lebanon, instability may be induced in Saudi Arabia by the sudden replacement of a (corrupt) consensus based autocracy by a centralized autocracy based, in cute metaphor, on shifting sands.

If a high cost seems doubtful, consider:

The purge had the suddenness of a no-knock drug bust. This style is motivated by necessity, because it lacks the replacement of consensus by another form of legitimacy. Of the choices available to fix a government, it has the least to say for it. So what was the necessity? The princes might have fought back and won.

Prince Miteb, head of the elite national guard, was purged. To an unknown extent, this admits the possibility that the security apparatus is not loyal to the monarchy.

The monarchy, which formerly governed through a pyramid bound together by money, consensus, and tribal ties, now governs through a bureaucracy. But the assumed loyalty may not be there, or may be for sale. This is a structural problem, a little like a skyscraper that is suddenly missing some girders in the middle.

The power base of the Salmans included a complex bargain with the Ulama. Prince Salman promises a more moderate Islam. Well and good, but this conflicts openly with the bargain with and charter of the Wahhabi ulama. Wahabism, which is indistinguishable in practice, if not history from Salafism, is not a moderate religion.

The power base of the royals, which was formerly based on this complex consensus pyramid of princes and clerics, now includes with certainty only common people of modern mindset. In the pyramid that remains, everybody else is a question mark. Who owes, and who is owed? Whose obligations will be cancelled, and whose wealth will be swept away?

While the Saudi kingdom maintains that the arrests are part of a larger investigation into corruption, it’s hard not to wonder if Alwaleed’s mouth — rather than his financial transactions — is to blame for his current predicament. The prince, who is more moderate than the ruling leaders, has challenged them on a variety of issues, including the ban on women driving (years before it was lifted).

Writer David A. Andelman is seduced by the visible. It’s not a mouth, halitosis, stained teeth, or anything like it. We carry with our culture the idea that people act out of conviction. While the extremes of Islam may give the impression that every thought and movement in the Middle East stems from conviction, this is not actually true. Every mind contains a secular component. In the ME, it is tribal culture. Preceding by millennia the nation-state, tribal culture was the second extension of the Darwinian principle, beyond the individual and then beyond the village.

it is part of this culture that tribes combine forces to gain advantage over other tribes. These combinations form, dissolve, and reform in short years according to conflict limited only by potential short term reward and available energy.

To the north of Saudi Arabia, in Syria, the principle is demonstrably active, in the eastern Sunni tribes who are willing to deal with Assad. To the south, in Yemen, the principle is active in the alliance of Ali Abdullah Saleh with the Houthis. Only ten years ago, Saleh was the Houthis’ greatest persecutor. The alliance is fraying. Switching sides is easily done, with shed blood vanquished by transparent oaths of convenience.

In Saudi Arabia, paved with petro-dollars, this primitive social system is challenged but still active. Sometimes a waning social system displays unexpected vitality in the face of existential challenge. A coup is not impossible.

Some possibilities, between which open-source cannot distinguish:

Alwaleed, a liberal, was secretly dealing with conservative hardliners out of sheer self preservation.

If the purge omitted Alwaleed, it would be logically impossible to reassure him about his own position, leaving him a loose cannon. Reforms would continually have to work around him.

Alwaleed resents Prince Salman as a usurper.

Alwaleed’s wealth could finance a coup.

In combination with the above, Alwaleed’s wealth would be a handsome addition to the national treasury.

The fluidity of tribal allegiances, so unfamiliar to us, makes any combination of the above possible. Compare this with U.S. Congressional politics, where principle usually prohibits working constructively with the minority party.

News coverage has so far omitted the Machiavellian nature of the arrests. It’s standard cynicism to remark that it’s about power, not corruption. But this is true. This is a purge. By the standards of the West, Saudi Arabia is corrupt. But by the norms of a tribal society, it is not. To pay off the headman of the tribe is perfectly normal. Some of the arrested run their own foreign policies, sponsoring terror. With specific reference to Saudi, this was discussed in General Mattis; Iran continues to sponsor terrorism; Iran, Iran, Iran. Quoting,

Only after approximations of western attitudes are accepted by the core of Saudi society will there even be the possibility of reform of the ulama itself. And of the Wahhabi madrassa system, which is funded on a more open level.

Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has been tasked by King Salman with the radical reformation of Saudi society. To recreate Saudi in the mold of a national state, the tribal structure must be co- opted or suppressed. Previous statements by Prince Salman have indicated confidence that the existing tribal structure can be co-opted for this purpose.

If the arrested were thought to be an asset to this program of radical change, the purge would not have happened. But with the announcement on 9/27 that Saudi women will be allowed to drive, those arrested, formerly an asset, became a problem. What is the connection?

Saudi society is perhaps the most severely patriarchal extant. Women behind the wheel as coup material sounds like a joke. But it’s serious business, striking at the core of male hegemony, just like the price of gas. Much like the sad fate of the Knights Templars on Friday the 13th, it suggests whispers of a coup struck down before the event.

The effort of the Salmans, King and Prince, to create a more level, civil, modern society is laudable. But the driving forces have not the apparency of China’s anti-corruption campaign. In Saudi, the definition of corruption itself has just changed, in service of the effort by the sitting government to drive revolution from the top down to the masses.

Intelligence establishments with SIGINT capability must now be pondering: If preparation for a coup is seen, whose side to take?